Desolation: IC

Leon felt relieved when that psycho-chick had left. He clambered out of the cubical, and walked towards the ruined and decayed entrance, slowly. He sure as hell didn't want to run into that girl and she kicks his ass. Now he wished that he did something badassier like become a marine, or police officer. But no, he had to try to become a businessman sitting at his computer all day.


Moving on, the planes overhead rocked the whole building. This place was decayed and hasn't been maintained for eons, so that was more motivation to find another home. Once Leon was out of the building, neither the girl nor his attacker was in sight. He stared up overhead, and saw the tails of the planes, then charged after them.


----------------




"Where are they going!?"


"What's going on?!"



Queen Carmelita was standing on the rooftop, across from the supply drop with several other high ranking members of the Allegiance. Her "ground forces" were strategically placed within' the crowds and several other places to have a better chance of taking all of the supplies for themselves. It was going to go great; once the ground forces secured the crowds and the supplies then she'd swoop in and take everything she needed while the rest of her gang tore through it like a wild animal.



That's when all of that was dashed and the planes dropped nothing in the original supply drops. "Boys, follow dese planes!" She immediately raised off the ground and chased after the planes. Since she was one of the very few members of the Allegiance that were flight-capable she would have a far better chance of getting to the supplies and securing them. Something she hated doing by herself, because of the lack of emotional presences (I.E: People) caused her abilities to get weaker to the point where even the weakest street rat can do more than kick her ass.


When the supplies were finally dropped (in some run down mall parking lot, surprising that some gang or vagrants didn't move in there) Carmelita was already descending. She detected someone from the general direction of the supplies, the emotional signals that this person gave off; indicated that (s)he was ecstatic about something. Possibly someone getting their mitts all over her treasure. All the more reason to up her pace.



When in sight, she saw the girl, the very same girl that Carmelita had spared, she shouted at Jenna "Well, well. Should have killed you when I had the chance...!" She stopped mid-air and crossed her arms. "Don't try running either. I will follow you. I can sense your emotions." Maybe she shouldn't have said that. If Jenna can somehow suppress her emotions then she'd be invisible to Carmelita's emotional detection, or if Jenna can hide in a crowd of people.


It'd be a bit before the rest of the Allegiance caught up, and she's weak at the moment. But, she felt that she'd be more than capable of taking on one lone girl. One hand started to glow emerald green, the other began to blow bright-blood red. Indicating that she really wants Jenna to stop and drop everything she picked up.

Lilith felt a brief spurt of sympathy as Iggy looked over the edge of the fire escape. Tendons stood out as his hands tightened their grip on the railing. There was also a short sting of jealousy. Even with his randomly-shapeshifting power, he was still permitted to have actual hands. He could grip things, open doors with ease, do a multitude of tasks that she could not. Carrying supplies, depending on their size, sometimes proved so difficult for her that she had to forego larger, possibly more useful items in favor of smaller objects that she could carry with ease.

But those were abilities lost to me in order to gain the gift of true, beautiful flight…

In the time she’d been mulling these thoughts over, he eyes (though unseeing) had been resting on Iggy. Coming back to awareness, she saw his spread his wings just in time and quickly climbed to a safer height. She nodded and, with a quick downward swoop and wing tilt to realign herself, she was cruising up behind him. Every movement needed to fly with grace had become like second nature to her. It was her preferred method of travel. When she was on the ground, her wings expansive breadth became cumbersome and vulnerable. They were like two giant targets.

I’ll have to be careful once we get there. Should I warn Iggy about my increased fragility when it comes to fighting/possible injury?

Lilith frowned, unwary of revealing a key weakness to someone still so new to her. Eventually she decided that if it seemed dangerous at the new drop site upon their approach, she would hang back a bit and use her wind abilities to fight. Time would tell if Iggy was as trustworthy as she hoped he would be.

“Lead the way.”

Iggy wheeled into the proper direction and took off; his speed was nothing Lilith couldn't handle, but he might have been topping out or close to it, given his amateurish technique. That much, some instruction might be able to fix.

"So, what else can you do? Besides be a bird, that is," Iggy asked, glancing back towards Lilith. "And why don't you come up a little closer, so we can talk more easily?"


Iggy watched for the lights of the plane, adjusting course slightly to follow. Should he tell her there's more than one in his head? That the other one had lately taken to being female the vast majority of the time? And just precisely how little power he had over his own body? She already knew to a certain extent, but not entirely; she was still missing rather a lot of details, and she might not trust him half as much after that.

With a steadying breath, Lilith began moving her wings in swooping strokes, getting more distance without expending too much energy through rapid movement. The breadth of her wings and the billowing currents they created aided in that. Scraps of debris in the alleyway rustled as their rest was disturbed, but soon enough she was soaring along next to Iggy.

“Well, I also have a sort of affinity- I guess you’d call it - for air and flowing breezes,” she said, taking care not to look away for obstacles, “I can sort of shape the currents of air around me to either lift me up, blow objects back, or create shields. You know, plus the obvious powers of flight.”

She paused for a second, thinking over the times she’d used her wind-shaping powers for something other than flight. There had been that one time when a few guys had tried to corner her. She’d managed to push them back with a shot of air long enough to lift off. Since then she’d avoided contact with others, stayed in the heights of the city. Birds stuck to the skies.

“They can be somewhat cumbersome, these wings,” she admitted, “They make flight easy as walking is for most people, but they just add weight and get in the way when I’m on the ground. Then there’s the lack of real hands,” she said, wiggling the little finger-claws for emphasis.

There was an element of guardedness to her onyx gaze, but, unless Iggy was very perceptive despite not knowing her for very long, it would probably go unnoticed.

But at least I know that I won’t suddenly change into something else.

“What about you? Is there anything else to your power?”

Iggy tried to shrug mid-flight, which almost made him seize up entirely for a second; as it was, his flight faltered, but he quickly recovered. "Well, I've got a couple dragons' worth of body parts stored somewhere - call it hammerspace, or call it an inventory, but I can't really control what comes out. And I've got a breath weapon, that's a bit like a taser, only it goes through anything that isn't completely sealed.

And... uh... I don't know how to put this where it won't sound bad, but I've..."

No. Iggy wasn't going to mention that.

"Uh, I found out about it when I accidentally shapeshifted my girlfriend when we were making out. Things just got weird from there."

Leaving the conversation as an entirely awkward pause there wasn't going to do. Best not to dwell on the negative consequence that could be construed as nearly bad as having a multiple-occupancy brain.

"Messing with air is pretty cool, though; I think I'd rather have your power, hands or no."


Ingrate.

"You're cute when you're jealous."

Grrrrrr.

Lilith nodded, that was pretty useful. Dragons were always renowned in myth for their versatile powers and awe-inspiring strength. Having those abilities at one’s disposal could sure come in handy if one actually knew how to wield them. The breath weapon on its own would be quite formidable.

He had a girlfriend on the outside at some point, wonder if she knows where he is now?

She had parents on the outside obviously, but whether they even knew where she was now was a mystery to her. Sure, they probably knew about Eden and its publicized purpose, but did they know that their little girl was entombed within its depths? Staying in contact with them after college hadn’t been a huge priority of hers, she was guilty to admit. They’d kind of urged her to go off on her own.

Wait a second… he shapeshifted his girlfriend, as in he changed her?

“Uh thanks,” she said in reply to his last statement, “So… you changed your girlfriend? That can happen along with your own shapeshifting?”

Could that randomly happen to me as well? What if I lost my wings at this height? With my fragile bone structure, along with the sheer drop, I’d become nothing more than a red-tinged splatter on the pavement…

Iggy thought it over for a moment, parsing Lilith's question, then finally hitting on what she meant. "No, not like that. I think it's got to be... very deliberate. In any case, I haven't done it a second time. The first was plenty enough for me. Not that it was bad or anything, you understand, it's just that it was my girlfriend, you know?"

Really, it wasn't just that it was his girlfriend; it was the way she'd pulled away suddenly and screamed: the way she'd tried to call him a monster, but simply spat and slavered, trying to use a forked tongue that was three times too long for her mouth. That had hurt him, cut him deep, and to be frank, disturbed him.

Not that that was the only abstraction/half-truth in the statement; by "very deliberate," he was pretty sure he needed permission from his "other half" in order to do it, but now that he was aware, she now needed his as well.

Thanks to their mutual flight, by this point, they were getting pretty close to the actual drop zone.

((I'll post with the psychopomp tomorrow))